Passengers on board a stranded Cathay Pacific flight from New York to Hong Kong were kept inside the plane for 16 hours because of limits on the crew's work hours and immigration rules.

Flight 831 was diverted to
the southern city of Zhuhai in China on 30 March following a hail storm.

The plane was left sitting
on the tarmac for hours until Cathay Pacific sent in a new flight crew, with the
first crew having reached work-hour limits.

All 256 passengers were kept on
board for the entire time because Chinese immigration and customs
regulations at Zhuhai did not allow them to enter the airport, Cathay Pacific said in a statement on Saturday.

According to the local
Chinese customs district, Chinese officials worked continuously to accommodate
the new 16 crew members, who took a high-speed ferry from Hong Kong and entered
China through a Zhuhai port before arriving at the airport.

Customs officials then set
up a temporary workplace at the airport, which does not have a permanent
customs office, to process the crew members' paperwork before flying the
plane out of Zhuhai in the early afternoon of 31 March, the customs district
said.

Cathay Pacific said the plane
took off at 1.08 pm, more than 16 hours after it landed in Zhuhai. The flight
arrived in Hong Kong a little over an hour later.

The flight usually takes
15-16 hours, but this flight turned out to be more than 34 hours long with the
stopover.